Legality of Crypto-Assets in India

Pradyumn Amit Sharma
Symbiosis Law School, Noida, India

Volume III, Issue IV, 2020

On 4th March, 2020, the Supreme Court of India in a significant judgement Struck down a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular that had effectively banned the trading of virtual currency and assets in India.  This decision by the apex court gives India the potential to be a future hub for crypto-assets and cryptocurrency, an industry which boasted a market capitalization of U.S. $ 327.1 billion in 2019 in the United States alone.  However, despite the aforementioned judgement, dealing in crypto-assets remains quite risky due to the absence of a regulatory body to monitor the transactions and the fact that the industry is not viewed favorably by the Indian government. Still the industry is growing at a high rate domestically, with the sum total of daily transactions ranging in millions of dollars. It has become an instrument which can no longer be ignored and it is important to study it as a revolutionary financial technology, especially by analyzing how other nations and international markets have proceeded to tackle it.